If you only have a few seconds, read these lines:

• On Friday, December 6, Alberto Fernández presented the team that will accompany him for the next 4 years. #ElGabineteDeTodos (“The executive office for all”), the hashtag promoted by the new president’s political space, was the most used on Twitter.
• 86% of the new ministers have an account in the platform.
• The officer with the most followers is Felipe Solá (Ministry of Foreign Relations); the one with the least followers is Marcela Losardo, but her followers increased by more than 1000% in one month.

A few minutes after 6 p.m. on Friday, December 6, and only four days after the transition of government, the president-elect Alberto Fernández formally presented the executive office that will accompany him in his administration. In addition to making a press announcement, he used his Twitter account to transmit it live to his followers. He was accompanied by 32 members of his team.

Chequeado analyzed what was discussed on Twitter about the presentation of the ministers since Friday, December 6 at 8 a.m. until the following Monday at the same time. During that period, 120,400 tweets were shared, with a peak of interactions at 7 p.m. on Friday, half an hour after the start of the conference.

Interactions about the new executive office on Twitter

Graph elaborated based on the interactions on Twitter about the presentation of the new presidential executive office, from Friday, December 6 at 8 a.m. until Monday, December 9 at the same time.

According to Trendsmap, 17.1% of the messages shared used the hashtag #ElGabineteDeTodos (“The executive office of all”), which stood out as the most popular hashtag. It was promoted by the Frente de Todos and the new ministers included it in their tweets (for example, see here and here).

The next hashtags in the ranking were “#gabinete” (”Executive office”, with 7.9%), “#argentinadepie” (“Argentina stands”, with 1.8%), “#ahoratodes” (“Now for all”, with 0.9%) e “#elequipodealberto” (“Alberto’s team”, with 0.7%). The most used words followed the same trend. They were “executive office” (73%), “alberto” (23%), “fernández” (16%), “all” (13%) and “minister” (13%). The emoji included the most in messages was the sun (15.1%), the symbol that characterizes the Frente de Todos.

The two most shared tweets regarding this topic were published, on one hand, by the president-elect, and on the other hand by @atlanticsurff, an account that sympathizes with the Mauricio Macri administration. They had approximately the same amount of shares (6 thousand). In addition, those were coincidently the two most active accounts in the conversation (including mentions, replies and retweets in this topic).

In his message, Fernández said he was “very proud of the executive office” he presented. This is a “team with unity, with men and women of enormous technical and moral quality”, eh said, including a photo with all the members. The message had 31 thousand likes and also the most replies in the period analyzed.

In turn, the tweet by the account @atlanticsurff, one of the most active on Twitter close to the Cambiemos, made a reference to María Eugenia Bielsa, who is now responsible for the Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat. “[It’s] the same thing she said with impunity: I’ll be honest, we steal. That’s what you voted for. Pass it forward, add to the volume and see, voting geniuses”, they said, reaching 8 thousand likes for a video shared in which Bielsa supposedly says these words. The minister has been connected to the corruption criticism related to Kirchnerism.

However, the official account of the Frente de Todos published several tweets in which each of the ministers was presented with a pane containing their photos, names and a short summary of their professional experiences. The most mentioned message was the one announcing Santiago Cafiero as Head of the Executive Office. Some users replied with comments in favor of the nomination (for example, see here), while others were against it (see here).

Observing the activity of the new officers on Twitter, Chequeado found that 18 of the 21 ministers of the Executive Office (86%) have an account on the social network. In addition, only half of them have verified users (see the database here).

Sabina Frederic (Security) confirmed the authenticity of @SabinaFrederic after recovering her account following rumors that indicated it had been invaded (see here and here). Santiago Cafiero (Head of the Executive Office), Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta (Women, Gender and Diversity), Luis Basterra (Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing) and Bielsa confirmed the authenticity of their accounts to us, as they are not verified. Marcela Losardo’s account (Law and Human Rights) was corroborated by her spokesperson, and Martín Guzmán’s account (Economy) was validated by his press team after several fake accounts were created on Twitter. On the other hand, Matías Kulfas (Productive Development), Claudio Moroni (Labor), and Tristán Bauer (Culture) told Chequeado that they do not have accounts in the platform.

The minister with the most followers is Felipe Solá (Foreign Relations), with 234 thousand, followed by Juan Cabandié (Environment), with 224 thousand. At the bottom of the ranking are Basterra, with 7,925 followers, and Marcela Losardo (Law and Human Rights), with 7,064.

However, Losardo stands out among the others due to the increase in her number of followers. In December, it grew from 558 to 7 thousand followers, an increase of more than 1000%. Another account which saw exponential growth during the nomination month was Frederic’s, who increased from one thousand followers to 10 thousand (980%).

Number of followers on Twitter per minister

Graph elaborated in-house based on data obtained on Twitter on the number of followers (starting from 12/12/2019) in the accounts of the ministers in the new executive office. Officers who do not have an account in the platform were excluded.

The oldest account in the new executive office belongs to Cabandié, who created it in March 2009. In second place is Solá (April 2009), and in third is Cafiero (May 2009). The most recent account belongs to Bielsa (January 2019).

On average, according to the number of tweets made by each user and the number of months they have been on Twitter, the most active account in the social network belongs to Agustín Rossi (Defence), with 245 messages published per month. However, outside the Executive Office, Victoria Donda (INADI) – whose account, @vikidonda, was verified by her press officer – has almost double the activity, with 477 messages published per month. In contrast, the least active account belongs to Losardo, with an average of 1 tweet per month since it was created in February 2017.

Lastly, of the possible interactions on Twitter (publishing, mentioning, commenting or retweeting), Chequeado found, via Trendsmap, that in 2019 most of the ministers who have accounts chose to share their own content (50%) or to retweet (44%), an action that promotes publications made by other accounts. Only one of the accounts (Nicolas Trotta, Minister of Education) preferred replying, which is normally used to make “sequences” (tweets that are related to each other) or to reply to other users.

* The Digital Democracy Room is a project of FGV DAPP in Brazil in partnership with Chequeado, Linterna Verde and Ojo Público. It’s goal is to monitor and analyze the digital conversations regarding the electoral context.

The analysis is available the website of Chequeado here.